


the shootout and the funeral

by More_night



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 07:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13852773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: Jesse and Gus walk in the desert, back to New Mexico, to deal with the outcomes of Gus' plot against the cartel. Also works as some missing scenes from Crawl Space.





	1. one

 

 

 

It was only when Gus Fring was intubated and stable that the doctor and nurses turned to Mike. Jesse’s throat hurt from the meth cooking, the yelling, the shootout. His head hurt from the solid two hours he had thought Gus and Mike had taken him to be abandoned here, in this patch of desert.

One of the nurses nodded for him to sit down. Jesse did, and the adrenalin drop made everything spin. They gave him a bottle of water. He downed it in a few swigs, like he had been in the desert for the past year. Then he figured he would just close his eyes for a bit. Just a bit.

It was the first time in a while that he didn’t see Jane’s face when he did.

 

 

 

When he woke up, the doctors were gone. The nurses were outside the tent, chatting, and inside the lights were down. Gus was flat on his back, no tube in his mouth now, eyes closed. Mike was patched up, a large dressing on his abdomen, sort of shining. But his chest was still covered in streaks of dried blood, his torn clothing on him, with blood on it too.

Jesse stepped closer. There was one machine with a screen showing lines and a pulse, that had to be Mike’s heartbeat, he didn’t know what the other lines were for. There were five bags on two IV stands, and some tubes right into the wounds.

“The bullet grazed the liver,” Gus ushered, voice strangled, behind him.

Jesse jumped. “Jesus.”

Gus was still on his back, one hand on his stomach, both eyes open. “He’ll be fine. But at his age, it’s a serious wound.”

“Yeah.” Jesse swallowed. “I’m glad he’s okay.” He looked down at his own right hand. It had felt weird when he had woken up, he had figured it was just dry, but now he saw that it was covered in crusted blood. Mike’s blood. He swallowed again. He didn’t feel as shaky as he would have thought. He felt tired. Very tired. Like he had run all the way from New Mexico down here. “You okay?” he asked Gus.

Gus had closed his eyes again. “I have been better.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Jesse huffed. “Was it worth it?”

On the gurney, Gus shifted a bit and opened his eyes again. He looked a bit smaller, thinner like this. He blinked slowly, as if trying to compose his face. “Yes,” he said. “And it is not finished.”

 

 

 

The nurses came back in. They gave Jesse fresh clothes. His size, of course. There were hiking boots, and a backpack with water and food.

He went in a room outside the tent to change. He washed the blood off his hand, but his skin kept a darker tone at the joints, where the red-brown color wouldn’t get out of the cracks. When he came back in, Gus was gone. The doctor was hooking the bags off the stands.

Jesse shifted his weight from foot to foot, then sat back on the chair. After a bit, the doctor made his way over to him.

“You did good work,” he said.

Jesse frowned. “How do you know that?”

The doctor shrugged, stared at the empty bed with stains of blood where Gus Fring had been. “Well, you did.”

Jesse stared at the bed too. “He could have killed me, you know?”

The doctor looked quizzically at him.

“The poison,” Jesse said. “They offered it to me. I was gonna drink it.” He gestured at the bed. “He stopped them.”

“I’d have phrased it differently,” the doctor said.

“What?”

“I’d have said he saved you.”

Jesse shook his head. “He doesn’t like junkies.”

The doctor was taking the sheets off the bed. He had a smile. “You must be more than that then.”

 

 

  

_They sat in the back of the old car that drove Gustavo and him up north through the Atamaca desert. It was cold and dusty. They were not alone in the car. But they felt somewhat exhilarated. Tense, as if they were pushed by force into something new. Far to the east, the Andes lined the horizon. West of them, but only a few kilometers away, the Cordillera Domeyco stood tall, bulky and red. A trap set by mountains, catching a tongue of frozen sand in between their broken arms._

_Gus had his eyes set on the horizon. “Are you scared?” he asked Maximino._

_“It’s good to be scared. Keeps you alive.”_

_Gustavo turned towards Maximino. He was still pale. The withdrawal had left his arms with a weak shake, always. “Maybe we’ll scare some people ourselves now,” he said._

_Maximino smiled._

_It was crazy, Gus thought, what drugs changed in your body. They changed everything really. The first week had been the worst. And somehow, even if Maximino had made it through, the shaking had stayed, perhaps to remind him that the addiction lived in his bones now. They changed everything, not unlike love, Gustavo thought._

_Then Maximino looked at Gustavo. He had started taking a little weight back, but he was still not hungry often enough. “I’ll miss the water. I mean, the ocean,” he said._

 

 

 

Jesse had thought that the plan was crazy, whatever the plan was, when he had seen the plane land down in the field. Of course it had gone way crazier since. But if Gus had told him that the plan was to go cook crystal for the cartel, poison everyone – including himself – escape in a rain of bullets and hell and death and fire, ride on the dirt tracks of the Mexican desert while Mike mumbled directions with blood coming out of his mouth, get reanimated by a bunch of top-dollar doctors – then _walk_ to the border… Jesse would have said the last part was the craziest. At least – now – it sort of seemed over the top.

They stopped after two miles. Jesse pointed at a twisted jacaranda tree. There was not much shade, but it cooled his skin a little bit. Gus’ breathing was heavy. He clutched his stomach as he sat.

Jesse took two bottles of water from the bag and checked the GPS widget thing to make sure they were going the right way. Mr. White’s voice, somewhere at the back of his mind, asked him if he even knew how to use the thing. You have to make sure to do it right… Jesse would have turned it around, wouldn’t he? Not really known where to start, didn’t think to ask, didn’t think.

But Mr. White wasn’t here. When they had started walking, Gus had just told him that there was a GPS in the backpack with their destination programed inside.

Jesse had expected to feel worse. Plagued. Wobbly. But his mind had a kind of quiet to it, a stretching silence, like he wasn’t waiting for anyone to talk to him. Maybe that was the way it should have felt all along.

Gus seemed tired. His face was not one Jesse had seen before. It was neither the chicken joint niceness, nor the druglord of death blankness. He just looked sort of softer, like there was something off his chest.

“You want to know something funny?” Gus said.

“You, uh…” Jesse started. “You don’t seem like you really do that. Funny.”

Gus just stared into the distance. “I hate the desert.”

“That makes New Mexico a sort of weird idea,” Jesse said after a beat.

“It was simpler. More natural. Closer to the cartel,” Gus said. “But I miss the ocean.” His voice wasn’t fake, or dreamy, or evil-dude’s-musings-y. It wasn’t much like anything. Jesse wondered if Gus had told this kind of things to anyone else.

Gus got up slowly, handed Jesse the bottle back.

“Why do you, uh, hate junkies?” Jesse said, fitting the GPS in his jeans pocket. “Are we like not worthy of respect because we smoke what you sell?”

A small frown touched Gus’ face. “I don’t hate junkies,” he said at last.

 

 

 

They crossed the Rio Grande near Fabens, on a flimsy bridge. The wood was burned with sun. Jesse went first. He probed the soft planks with his foot as he went. Gus followed him, reaching for Jesse’s arms at times to steady himself.

After that, it was one more mile until they reached a road. It was a lone, deserted stripe of asphalt in the land. They had met no one on their way and, for most of the journey, Jesse had wondered what would have happened if they had. There was a gun in the backpack. He had slid it in his belt, but all it had done was feel heavy and collect sweat.

Gus stepped out on the asphalt, dialed on a burner phone and spoke in Spanish to whoever answered. A black car came by fifteen minutes later, smooth and silent, Tyrus driving. Gus and Jesse sat in the back. Jesse tilted his head back and closed his eyes, grateful for the AC. It had been hours since he had even thought about a hit, perhaps even a full day.

 

 

 

Jesse woke up to the sight of a green signpost saying they were only thirty miles from Albuquerque now.

He stretched on his seat. The day was starting to get into him. His shoulders felt like stone.

“Why do you think I hate junkies?” Gus asked.

Jesse smirked in the sun reflecting in the rearview mirror. “You didn’t want me in in the first place,” Jesse said. “And you almost let me drink that tequilla thing.”

“I’m sorry if that seemed improvised,” Gus said. “It had to look that way.”

“So it didn’t, like, cross your mind to leave me here?”

For a moment, Gus seemed to drift away. “Honestly?” He turned back toward Jesse. “No. You were to come back with us.”

“Why?”

Maybe Jesse’s voice was more poignant than he had thought it would be. Anyhow, Gus’ face turned soft again. “I knew an addict,” he said.

“What? Who?”

Gus looked at him for a while. And at some point, Jesse had the feeling he looked through him at something, or someone else. Then he was staring out the window again, and they were only twenty miles out of Albuquerque now.

 

 

 

They stopped at the laundry. Jesse got out of the car, tugged at the belt of his pants. He looked around. His car was there, where he had left it. On his right hand, Mike’s blood was gone. Above the laundry, the wide chimneys let out their huge puffs of clean smoke. It smelled same as ever, like soap, but it got up your nose a little bit.

Gus got out of the car carefully. He was a bit paler than earlier.

“That addict you knew, is he dead?” Jesse asked.

“Very much so.”

“Did you…?” Jesse’s voice trailed off. “Did you kill him?”

The older man smoothed the lapel of the pale shirt he wore, like he would his suit jacket. “No,” he said. “The cartel did.”

“You mean, these guys by the pool?”

Gus nodded.

Jesse blinked, then looked away. His left hand padded his rear pocket. Where were his cigarettes? And then it struck him – he had left the pack home – in case they searched him. “He… he was your cook?” Gus nodded again. “Why’d they kill him?”

The older man had a small smile, one that didn’t look like a smile at all. “To this day, I do not exactly know,” he said. “Maybe just to spill his blood.”

 

 


	2. 2.

 

 

 

The day after that, smoking on Andrea’s porch, Jesse heard news from Tyrus that Mike was back in Albuquerque.

Jesse was there alone in the evening sun, with a bunch of kids playing in a car nearby, and Brock and Andrea were going over Brock’s homework in the kitchen, and he closed his phone, and felt tears in his eyes. Like he had been holding them back since forever. Like he was torn inside that everything was going to be fine.

 

 

 

And god, it felt okay. Like he could maybe live with himself. The bad guy that felt so much like his own skin it didn’t feel bad at all.

The next morning, Tyrus picked him up. He walked up to the tall black SUV and sat on the back seat. Gus was there, waiting, dressed like himself again.

They drove to the nursing home. Gus told Tyrus to stay in the car, and Jesse came with him inside. Before walking into the main room, Gus told him, “Wait here. It won’t be long.”

Jesse stood a little back from the doorway. There was a board with the list of meals for the week, and old birthday cards, and old funeral notes pinned beside them, below a wide, yellow happy face.

In the room, Gus was still talking to Tio Salamanca. Eventually Salamanca’s eyes followed Gus’ finger and found Jesse. And that’s when Jesse knew.

When they were back in the elevator, Jesse said, “Salamanca killed him, right?”

Gus’ eyes didn’t waver. His face was stiller than the walls around them. “It was nearly two decades ago.”

“I knew an addict,” Jesse said. “I mean…” He licked his lips. He woke up. He found her. That’s all he knew. “She OD’ed a while back. Everyone told me it wasn’t my fault.”

“But it was?”

Jesse’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes burned. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. They walked back into the pale grey parlor. Two old ladies sitting in their walker talked with old coffee cups in their hands.

Gus buttoned his coat and stopped Jesse before they reached the doors. “I spent the last two decades thinking Maximino’s death was Hector’s fault.” Gus looked at the horizon, beyond the glass doors, as if he didn’t really recognize it. “I brought him there. At Don Eladio’s house.”

Jesse looked at his shoes. “Yeah, and you brought me there too,” he said. “And I’m out.”

They walked out and reached the car. It was a beautiful day, with the clear and blue sky that only the desert had.

Gus opened the front door, Jesse went around the back. He looked for something to say. “Maybe it wasn’t your fault,” Jesse said. Gus paused by the open car door, and cast a last look at the Casa Tranquila.

 

 

 

_Maximino learned about methamphetamine hydrochloride in a pharmacology class. Some people used it like amphetamines for exams. He met Gustavo that same week._

_They were nothing alike and they were entirely alike. Gustavo was a young officer in the regime. He had come up in the ranks late enough to realize that all that could be profited from it was gone, and that the dictatorship was moribond. Maximino worked in his parents’ restaurant, and all he wanted was the sky, the sea, the world, and wings, and to leave. Just to leave._

_He first cook was in the university lab, late at night, with two other students watching. By the end of the term, he had discovered he was better than most at synthetizing it. He had tasted it a couple times. It never really let him go._

_One day of Spring 1984, Gustavo stopped at the Arciniega restaurant, late at night, as always. Max’s parents were sleeping. Max cleaned the kitchen. Gustavo had learned to see it in everything now: Max’s arms were more tense, his eyes had that faint redness, his skin a strange dampness. It was worse today. Max could barely talk sense. He needed it to stay awake, work the hours here for the money, finish the chemistry degree._

_He paused at the entrance to the kitchen, placed his hat down on a counter. “We cannot do this if you’re not clean,” Gustavo said._

_Maximino turned to him, his eyes pale and fierce. “I cook better metamphetamine high than anyone can sober.”_

_Gustavo blinked slowly. “Yes. And you’ll cook it to perfection until you get us both killed.”_

 

 

 

Jesse was leaving the laundry, thinking he’d get tacos and fries. Everything was quiet. People were leaving, others were coming in.

“Kid,” Mike said, behind him.

Jesse turned around. It was really Mike. “Hey,” he said. Mike stood next to his car, his left hand in the pocket of his coat, pressing on his stomach. Jesse looked at his shirt, trying to spot blood or something. But there was nothing. The older man only seemed tired. He had lost weight. “You okay.”

Mike nodded. “I am.” He looked away at a laundry employee who burst out laughing on her way to the bus. “Boss said things were okay.”

“Yeah, all’s fine.” Jesse fished for a cigarette. “I mean like always.”

“You haven’t been doing this always.”

Jesse shrugged, dragged on his cigarette. “Well, always is fine, I guess.”

Slowly, Mike nodded. “Careful when you say that.”

Jesse nodded. There had been some moments, when he had thought he would not see Mike again. He had wondered what he had become to miss people who barely cared about him. Then he had wondered if he had ever not done that. “Did you know?” he said. “About the shootout in Mexico?”

“I know he had a plan,” Mike said. “And I didn’t think it’d work so well, honestly.”

“Since how long had he planned this?”

Mike sighed. “Longer than you think. Maybe forever.”

“And isn’t the cartel going to, like…” Jesse waved his cigarette around in the air. “Retaliate, or something?”

Shaking his head, Mike said, “It’s going to take them a while to know what hit them. And when they realize who it was, they’ll see they need him. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

For a moment, Jesse wondered who needed who, again. “Just, uh, just let me know, when it’s coming.”

Mike nodded. “You’ll know.”

 

 

 

_Mike stared at the bottle of Zafiro Añejo. It stood oddly sparkling in the dim golden light, on the desk of Gustavo Fring’s office. Then he looked at Fring. Then back at the bottle. “It’s not going to work,” he said, rubbing his hand over his eyes._

_“Yes. It will.”_

_Mike shook his head. “Are you sure he’ll drink it?”_

_“It’s tradition. Subordinates bring presents. The bigger the business, the fancier the gift.” Gus stood over his desk, fingertips on the table, on each side of the open wooden casket. Inside, the $1,125 bottle seemed unworldly, with its ridiculous flowery cork._

_Mike blinked slowly. “What if he’s hungover? Sick? In a bad mood?”_

_Fring nodded tersely, his eyes never leaving Mike’s. “Then he will kill us all.”  
_

_Mike chuckled dryly. “We avoid the perfect storm…”_

_“By creating it. Exactly.”_

_On some level, Mike knew he had no choice. He wished he could consult his former self, before he had requested Fring’s help to launder his money, to know what his mind would have been. But it was possible he had not been such a different person. Maybe he would have said yes. For Kaylee. Maybe for himself._

_“Okay,” was all he said. “Should I tell Pinkman?”_

_Gus shook his head. “He’s not even sure he can cook a batch on his own.”_

_Mike got up. “Can he?”_

_A shadow moved over Gus’ face. “He’s done it,” he said. “He can do it again.”_

_Grabbing his coat from the chair, Mike stood back, his eyes on the bottle again, pondering. Maybe that was the end. “And if he can’t?” he said. “Let me guess – they kill us all.”_

_Gus stood unflinchingly. Death had always been in this room with them, Mike thought. But now that it was closer, bigger, reasonably more imminent, Fring seemed almost brave in his facing it._

_“In this line of work, I always thought there were people who enjoyed the shootouts most,” Mike said. “And others who enjoyed everything else most, and avoided fights for as long as they possibly could.” He put on his coat. “I admit I had you pictured as the latter.”_

_Making sure to do it as softly as possible, Gus closed the wood casket, tied the blue ribbon back over it. He held both ends carefully, placed his middle finger on the knot, then pulled until the buckles were full. It was a very neat bow. Then he looked up at Mike. Mike didn’t know what face this was. It was nor the criminal’s, nor the fake one. “This will not be a shootout. This will be a funeral.”_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are currently 42 comments in my inbox. i'm overwhelmed with coursework until june. but then i'll read all and reply. and thanks all for your reading and writing and thoughts.


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